Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/22

4 of the house of burgesses. He distinguished himself, also, as colonel of the Virginia forces in driving off a band of Seneca Indians who were ravaging the neighboring settlements. In honor of his public and private character, the parish in which he resided was called Washington. In this parish his grandson, Augustine, the second son of Lawrence Washington, was born in 1694. By his first wife Augustine had four children. Two of them died young, but two sons, Lawrence and Augustine, survived their mother, who died in 1728. On March 6, 1730, the father was again married. His second wife was Mary Ball, and George was her first child.

If tradition is to be trusted, few sons ever had a more lovely and devoted mother, and no mother a more dutiful and affectionate son. Bereaved of her husband, who died after a short illness in 1743, when George was but eleven years of age, and with four younger children to be cared for, she discharged the responsibilities thus sadly devolved upon her with scrupulous fidelity and firmness. To her we owe the precepts and example that governed George's life. The excellent maxims, moral and religious, which she found in her favorite manual—"Sir Matthew Hale's Contemplations"—were impressed on his memory and on his heart, as she read them aloud to her children; and that little volume, with the autograph inscription of Mary